Monthly archive: July, 2013

Drawing into double figures with my posts on Victor Serge, my aim here is to bring attention to a really useful new book entitled Vagabond Witness: Victor Serge and the Politics of Hope by Paul Gordon. The book is published by Zer0 Books, an imprint of John Hunt Publishing, which is doing great work in developing a series of new critical books on culture, society and politics. Gordon’s short book is a wonderful primer on Victor Serge that in just over 100 pages provides highly useful background on the novels, political writings, and memoirs all written by this participant-witness to revolutionary action. Indeed, one of the key themes to emerge from the book is the political act of witnessing: both in terms of Serge’s life of witnessing the experience of revolution and the repressive state in Russia and in witnessing along with other significant contemporaries wider conditions of revolution, repression, and the violence of state power.

With global protests continuing in Egypt as the latest wave of the so-called and ongoing ‘Arab Spring’, as well as in Turkey recently, this eleventh contribution to the Thesis Piecesseries, by Philip Roberts, turns attention to the social protests in Brazil. Can the institutional Left organically connect with the popular demonstrations and mount a real challenge to capitalism in Brazil?

The most surprising thing about the protests that accompanied the Confederations Cup is that they were so unexpected. Political and economic tensions in Brazil have been simmering for some time now. The rate of growth of Brazil’s economy is declining, whilst inflation gathers pace. Basic foodstuffs, in particular, have risen drastically in price. This has led Brazil’s political satirists to parody the situation, with cartoons showing tomatoes as a luxury item. Meanwhile, at the global level, protests and civil unrest are fast becoming more the expectation than the exception. Starting with the Greek protests and the Arab Spring in 2010, and continuing through events in Egypt, Syria, Bulgaria and Turkey, mass mobilisations have become a familiar fixture. A glance at the headlines suggests that it really is “kicking off everywhere”.

On the theme of space and Mexico City on this blog my attention has thus far spanned the novels of Paco Ignacio Taibo II to include The Shadow of the Shadow [1986], Just Passing Through [1986] and Returning as Shadows [2001]. Also, my coverage has included a vain search for references to the Monument to the Revolution in the works of Carlos Fuentes, from his famous novel Where the Air is Clear [1958] to the more recent novella Vlad [2004]. From these cronistas of modern Mexico, or key pensadores (intellectuals-at-large) that provide a vision of culture on a national scale, my attention then turned to the works of what I have termed the ‘foreign flâneur’ in Mexico; thus far including Sybille Bedford and Aldous Huxley with more to come. Running with this theme of space and the city, I now relay some key insights from the novel Modelo antiguo [1992] by Luis Eduardo Reyes, published in English with Cinco Punto Press. In this novel, the insights on space and place facilitate a broader reconnaissance of Mexico City. Linking this novel with the insights of Salvador Novo in Nueva grandeza mexicana [1947], the ‘Chronicler of Mexico City’, as well as additional viewpoints from ‘foreign flâneurs’ such as Charles Macomb Flandrau and Rebecca West, provides further insight into the spatial making of Mexico City in the twentieth-century.

This is already the tenth addition to the Thesis Piecesseries made up of contributions from my past and present PhD research students at the University of Nottingham. This blog post from Görkem Altınörsspotlights some of the key misunderstandings about the Gezi Movement in Istanbul and focuses on the social processes linked to how shopping malls in Turkey have become what he calls the “spatial incarnations of neoliberal order” in Turkey.

Kapitalizm gölgesini satamadığı ağacı keser

(Capitalism will cut down the tree if it can’t sell its shadow)

— Graffiti around Taksim Square

The greatest civil uprising in recent Turkish history erupted in Istanbul on 31 May 2013. It started with a peaceful sit-in protest in order to protect a few (probably the last) trees in the city centre. The excessive usage of force by police against activists assisted protests in spreading first across Istanbul and then to almost all cities throughout Turkey as well as major cities around the world. Demonstrations took an inspiring, widely participated, and multi-located form which created its own humour via graffiti and social media. According to government resources 2.5 million people joined rallies across the Turkey. The Turkish Medical Association has declared 4 deaths and over 8,000 injuries (60 with serious conditions). More than 70 people have been detained (out of 4,900 arrests) within 20 days.